Massachusetts' legendary senior Senator and national liberal icon, Ted Kennedy. Massachusetts' junior Senator and the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry. Massachusetts' precedent-shattering Governor, Deval Patrick. None of the endorsements were enough for Barack Obama to win the Massachusetts primary.
While we gave a lot of attention yesterday to Senator Obama's epic Boston rally, Seth Gitell was reminding people that--press attention and celebrity status aside--the two strongest political machines in the state belong to Boston's Mayor Tom Menino and Worcester's Congressman Jim McGovern, both of whom were backing Senator Clinton.
Bostonist met Gitell--Menino's former press secretary who now analyzes politics for NECN and the NY Sun--at the State of the City last month and his no-frills, all-insight blog has quickly become mandatory reading for us.
Though Obama praised his friend Deval Patrick for building a broad, grassroots movement in his gubernatorial victory, that clearly didn't translate yesterday, when huge swaths of the commonwealth came out for Clinton. One difference is that during the Governor's campaign McGovern was on his side. This time around, McGovern backed Clinton, and she won much of central Massachusetts by large margins.
Will any of this have an impact at the State House? We'd like to say no, if only to be able to disagree with the Herald's Howie Carr. Still, it seem clear that this was another showing of political weakness for Governor Patrick. Somewhere, Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi--another outspoken Clinton backer--is smiling.
Photo by Bostonist's Korri Leigh Crowley.
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